NASA Instrument Inaugurates 3-D Moon Imaging

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

IMAGE ADVISORY: 2008-239 Dec. 17, 2008

NASA Instrument Inaugurates 3-D Moon Imaging

PASADENA, Calif. – Different wavelengths of light provide new information about the Orientale Basin region of
the moon in a new composite image taken by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a guest instrument aboard
the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper is the first instrument to provide highly uniform imaging of the lunar surface.
Along with the length and width dimensions across a typical image, the instrument analyzes a third dimension
– color.

This two-image figure, and other data from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper Instrument can be found at:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11727 .

The composite image consists of a subset of Moon Mineralogy Mapper data for the Orientale region. The
image strip on the left is a color composite of data from 28 separate wavelengths of light reflected from the
moon. The blue to red tones reveal changes in rock and mineral composition, and the green color is an
indication of the abundance of iron-bearing minerals such as pyroxene. The image strip on the right is from a
single wavelength of light that contains thermal emission, providing a new level of detail on the form and
structure of the region's surface.

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper provides scientists their first opportunity to examine lunar mineralogy at high
spatial and spectral resolution.

"The Moon Mineralogy Mapper provides us with compositional information across the moon that we have
never had access to before," said Carle Pieters, the instrument's principal investigator, from Brown University
in Providence, R.I. "Our ability to now identify and map the composition of the surface in geologic context
provides a new level of detail needed to explore and understand Earth's nearest neighbor."

The Orientale Basin is located on the moon's western limb. The data for this composite were captured by the
Moon Mineralogy Mapper during the commissioning phase of Chandrayaan-1 as the spacecraft orbited the
moon at an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 miles).

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper was selected as a Mission of Opportunity through the NASA Discovery
Program. Carle Pieters of Brown University is the principal investigator and has oversight of the instrument as
a whole as well as the Moon Mineralogy Mapper Science Team. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., designed and built the Moon Mineralogy Mapper and is home to its project manager, Mary
White. JPL manages the project for NASA's Discovery Program in the Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was constructed, launched, and is operated by the Indian Space
Research Organization.

More information about Chandrayaan-1 is at : http://www.isro.org/Chandrayaan . More information about
NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper is at : http://m3.jpl.nasa.gov .

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